


Fool Me

by ForNought



Category: Free!
Genre: Alcohol, Embarrassment, Future Fic, M/M, Miscommunication, OFC - Freeform, everyone is a bit over the top, lots of italics, most of them work at the yamazakis' restaurant, poor pacing, reluctance to talk, they're all bad texters too, well they're no longer in school as with all my free fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7351870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForNought/pseuds/ForNought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sousuke likes a good joke as much as the next person - he is very jovial! But a certain kind of joke riles him up in all the wrong ways but maybe it is the person making the jokes. In a moment of bravery Sousuke attempts to sort things out and makes things worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool Me

 

Sousuke can’t take a joke.

There are some jokes that he can take – or he is certain he takes them as intended. When people – most often Rin – poke fun at his personality, Sousuke can brush off such remarks and maybe even chuckle a little bit.

There is a certain type of joke that Sousuke struggles with.

He was fine with it at first when it was a matter of being told he was on the list being considered to be Kisumi’s ‘betrothed’, as he had put it. It was a very different thing when the joke evolved. As it stands, Sousuke is the only candidate who gets to be part of jokes like these but Sousuke would prefer not to be.

Sousuke doesn’t mind being called a grumpy old man when the time calls for it. It is a proven thing when enough is enough and he realises that he cannot take a joke.

 

“No way. Kisumi dies with you. Our kids will have nice normal names.”

“Kisumi is a nice normal name,” Kisumi says with the kind of laugh that suggests he believes his words.

Sousuke pretends to check a few of the tables for their place settings as though he hadn’t already checked everything as well as he could. He nudges a napkin and decides it is fine for him to lean against the table as there aren’t any signs of customers. He folds his arms across his chest and schools his face into something impassive.

“You are hardly the poster-boy for nice and normal.”

“And you are?” Kisumi asks, mirroring Sousuke’s pose on the opposite table. There is something of a challenge in the cock of his eyebrows and Sousuke realises too late that he isn’t going to get out of this conversation unscathed.  

“I’m nice, and _very_ normal,” Sousuke says.

“No need to tell me, I am already sold on this marriage. It’s you who needs to pick a date.”  

“I’m free whenever you are,” Sousuke replies as offhand as he can manage. He tries for a smirk just to pretend he can get in on the joke.  

“I’ll have to check my diary,” Kisumi says with a much more organically smug expression before standing up straight and peering out the window to see if anybody has noticed that the sign on the door still said “closed.”

 

 

Sousuke doesn’t drink often.

When he gets home the morning after he left for a quiet drink with some friends, he slowly turns the door handle and hold the door firmly as he pushes it open and he kicks of his shoes. His attempts to dull the thud of the closing door fail because it has always taken a lot of force to make sure the door shuts firmly enough for the lock to turn.

He glances over his shoulder as though his mum would have materialised behind him at the stifled sounds of his return home. She isn’t there, thankfully, and Sousuke continues to creak his way over floorboards to his bedroom.

He does not even bother to wash his face and he strips to his underwear before he rolls out his futon and drags his blanket over himself haphazardly. His phone vibrates on the floor next to his head where he had dropped it as he undressed. For a long moment Sousuke considers leaving it but the flashing notification light is a beacon in the dark which begs his attention.

The message he finds is from Kisumi. ‘ _You kissed Mina-chan! How can our marriage survive this!_ ’

At least Sousuke knows whether or not Kisumi had heard about the kiss. It was a meaningless thing that happened. Mina was infectiously merry and despite the sourness of her breath from the alcohol and cigarettes, her scent was mostly floral temptation. She was pretty and when Sousuke had mumbled something about the taste of cigarettes she had discreetly slipped a tab of chewing gum into her mouth before the next kiss, the spearmint sharpness startling Sousuke away from the slide of tongues just so he could comment. She had laughed and kissed him again. She might have been laughing at him, which Sousuke had not even considered until the stillness of his dark bedroom was his only company.

It was just a kiss between inebriated friends, though at the time Sousuke had wondered aloud whether anybody else had seen.

Sousuke can’t do anything about the fact that Kisumi had seen. He considers his thumbs before typing a reply and quickly sending it without reading it for clarity. ‘ _it was only a bit of a kiss so it doesn’t count we’re totally still happily married_ ’

Sousuke waits. The ellipses appearing and disappearing as Kisumi types his reply. The waiting gets too much and Sousuke drops his phone to the floor and rolls over. When his eyes are scrunched tight he jolts at the vibration of his phone.

Kisumi could have typed anything. Sousuke has a very narrow view of the kinds of things he wants to read. He wants Kisumi to say it is fine and that they can still go on as before, Kisumi’s possibly flirtatious mentions of married life rebuffed by Sousuke’s stumbling ineptitude.

Sousuke braces himself. He feels annoyed.

‘ _I should have left the two of you alone. I hate being the third wheel and Mina-chan could have got you home safely without me_.’

‘ _i like it when you’re around so you weren’t a third wheel at all_ ’

He breathes for a moment and as an afterthought he adds, ‘ _who would have made sure mina got home safely if you didn’t come’_

Sousuke finds himself waiting again, yet instead of his previous tiredness he is trying not to grind his teeth together so hard. He has to be patient because being rash has never done him any good before, but he would prefer Kisumi not continue with his self-pity.

In the end Kisumi doesn’t continue with his self-pity or anything else that might have redeemed him in Sousuke’s eyes. Sousuke drifts to sleep a few times, waking up at half hour intervals to find his message very ignored.

Three hours after his return home he gets up. He can’t sleep and the curtains are doing very little the filter out the bright early morning. He roughly folds away his futon and doesn’t so much as kick out at the unfurling bundle as soon as he releases it. He ambles out of his room and right into his mother who smooths over her surprise with a smirk.

“Didn’t expect to see you so soon, you dirty stop out.”

“Morning.”

Sousuke’s mum grins wider and swats at his arm as she walks towards the kitchen. He follows because he assumes that is what he is supposed to do.

“How hung over are you then?”

“Shouldn’t you tell me off for coming home at six in the morning? You’re my mum and I could have got into all sorts of trouble last night.”

She laughs at that, loudly at first before she puts her hand over her mouth as though that alone would stifle her sounds, or even take the sounds back. Sousuke’s dad must still be sleeping and he wonders whether either of his parents would act anything like he expects them too, reprimanding him for becoming a yobbish youth.

“As long as you don’t get up to anything _illegal_ or too dangerous I don’t mind whatever you do when you come home safely.” Sousuke highly doubts that but his mum just pats his arm absently as she boils the kettle. She adds, “You’re a young man and it is about time you act like it. Even if you don’t go out drinking the least you should do is spend some time with your friends and have fun.”

Sousuke supposes he did have a lot of fun but he can’t remember much beyond the irritation pressing at his mind. He did have fun but what does fun amount to when he may or may not have hurt someone. He can’t blame Kisumi for being hurt if that is how he feels but to make it through the night with all his relationships intact would have been a nice alternative. 

“There’s no need to look so serious, you know,” Sousuke’s mum says with a grin.

“What?”

“As long as you make time to let loose every once in a while there is no need for you to feel so burdened by it,” She says. She drops a teabag into a cup and slowly pours water into it.

She slides the cup across the counter towards Sousuke.  He hesitates as he watches her make up another cup of tea but when she takes her first sip Sousuke reasons that this much is fine. He won’t mention the kiss or the fact that he is annoyed with a friend because his mum doesn’t need to know things like that. As long as he is a good son it might not matter that he is not a good friend.

 

It is not until the early afternoon, when his mum had gone to the restaurant to open up and left him snoozing in front of the television that Sousuke checks his phone again. He finally has a reply from Kisumi.

‘ _Sorry about last night. I was being stupid._ ’

Sousuke fights against a smile, uncertain as to whether he is still annoyed with Kisumi. He might not be now that he has a reply. Then again he had struggled to get to sleep for quite some time before he gave up. Not that Kisumi needs to know that his guilt reached the point that it made him lose sleep. Sousuke rereads the messages from last night. He decides to be nice and types out a similarly apologetic but overall safe reply.

‘ _sorry for doing something silly last night_ ’

‘ _I was drunk and jealous. Forget about it. I always overreact when I’ve had a bit to drink! XD_ ’

‘ _I will try not to make drunk-you jealous are we cool_ ’

‘ _Cooler than the north pole!_ ’

‘ _cool_ ’

For the next five minutes or so, Kisumi proceeded to compare just how ‘cool’ they were to things that were mostly cold but sometimes lukewarm.

‘ _Ahhh! I think I will end up in bed all day_.’

Sousuke fights against the thoughts of Kisumi’s messy hair while he is tangled in his blankets as he lies in bed and squints at his phone as he trades messages back and forth. Sousuke doesn’t need to think about things like that.

‘ _i still havent slept yet Im jealous’_

‘ _Why not? Have you had a busy morning already?_ ’

Kisumi would not be asking a question like that if he had read any of the messages Sousuke had sent earlier. He briefly considers telling Kisumi to get a clue, or to at least read back over the messages, but he doubts any of his thoughts on the matter would get through the foggy luckiness of sleep. Sousuke steadies himself and types and sends his reply before he can rethink it.

‘ _i couldnt sleep this morning because of the guilt!_ ’

‘ _What guilt?_ ’

Sousuke’s blood might be boiling. Or he might just be embarrassed.

‘ _making you jealous_ ’

‘ _SOUSUKE~!!!! I’m sorry I was just drunk and jealous. I didn’t know you couldn’t sleep!_ ’

‘ _i thought I had hurt your feelings or something_ ’

Kisumi sends several more very loud and heavily punctuated messages which are vaguely apologetic in sentiment but mostly just wordy. Sousuke follows suit and sends replies meant to play at Kisumi’s own guilt for keeping sleep away from Sousuke, though whether or not Kisumi feels anything like remorse is something Sousuke will continue to wonder about privately.

He is happy to continue the conversation for the rest of the day until Kisumi sends a message that makes Sousuke scratch his head. He puts down his phone and pretends he cares about the noticeably low-budget drama on the television.

‘ _You have nothing to feel guilty about_.’

 

 

 

It had been a while since Sousuke had last seen Rin in person. He looked mostly the same. Perhaps he had been doing more conditioning; the line of his jaw seems sharper. He may just be holding himself differently but he looks happy.

“I’ve heard some things about you and a certain lady,” Rin says after half an hour of complaining about the training regime he himself had asked his coach to devise. 

“What’s that?” Sousuke asks with some trepidation. He doesn’t do much worth talking about with any ladies – aside from things he might have done with Gou. They are friends and Sousuke does have fun with her but there isn’t much that he would think is worth mentioning to other people.

"I can’t remember her name. You work with her and you kissed her,” Rin says absently.

“She kissed me,” Sousuke shoots back. There isn’t a particular reason for him to feel defensive about the whole thing but he ends up speaking too sharply. He amends it with a much softer, “She was very emphatic about the fact that she regretted kissing me, actually.” He hopes his grimace is hidden well enough behind the heel of his hand as he leans on the table. “But I’m kind of glad it happened.”

“Oh, you actually liked her, that’s rough,” Rin says very carefully.

“Not really.” That wasn’t the case, Sousuke realises. He didn’t have any particular feelings towards Mina but she was nice enough that he could have started to speculate about future kisses and the tangling of fingers and timid invitations for dates. It could have been very sweet. He sighs and amended, “I hadn’t really considered her before it happened but I wouldn’t have minded if she liked me.”

“I knew you were a romantic deep down,” Rin mutters, bitterly vindicated.

“Whatever. Somebody messaged me afterwards. After the, uh, kiss.”

“What?”

“I’m talking about why I was glad that I kissed Mina even though she doesn’t like me,” Sousuke says, sounding totally calm and not at all irritated. Rin rolls his eyes and Sousuke goes on. “Well there may have been a person that I had started to like and they found out about the kiss. I didn’t quite understand the messages at first but I realised that the message saying I shouldn’t feel guilty was because I wasn’t hurting anybody by kissing Mina. Well nobody who liked me anyway because nobody did like me. I suppose if somebody likes Mina that is something for the two of them to work out.”

Rin tilts his head and squints at Sousuke for a long moment before he says, “I don’t get it.”

“I was starting to like somebody and I was scared that I hurt them but they sent me a message that basically said that they don’t like me. So I can stop thinking about that person in that way. I can go back to normal.”

It was sort of liberating, having his burgeoning hopes crushed. Maybe his chest ached and his eyes stung a bit as he read the message in bed the afternoon after. Maybe thinking about the message still makes an irritable fuzz press at the insides of his skull. He doesn’t care at all. He still has some lingering resentment towards the Sousuke of the week before, the stupid Sousuke who had started to feel things. 

But Sousuke doesn’t care at all.

“That is an interesting way of thinking about things,” Rin says evenly. “I’ll have to let Gou know the bad news. She was already picking out a dress for the wedding.”

That gives Sousuke pause. There must be some joke that either he or Rin has missed because as nice as Mina is, Sousuke cannot see a way that they would marry. Gou knows very well why Sousuke wouldn’t want to marry Mina but sharing the information with Rin still seems like a hurdle too far.

“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” Sousuke says with a tight smile. He wonders why there are still things he struggles to say.

 

 

It is always quiet on weekdays at the restaurant.

A young group of girls came in half an hour ago and apparently still hadn’t decided on anything to order. They are still making headway on the complementary bread rolls.

Kisumi has already passed by the table asking whether they were ready to order and they had waved him off and giggled conspiratorially each time.

Sousuke follows at a distance the next time Kisumi makes his way over to the table. He doesn’t particularly feel surprised at what he overhears.

“Just let her give you her phone number,” One of the braver girls wheedles with a tilt of her head and a coy sweep of her hair behind her ear.

“I can’t do that. I am working so it would be unprofessional of me to accept a customer’s number,” Kisumi says, miraculously without stuttering. 

“You’re going to let a little something like ‘professionalism’ stand in the way of true love? Chiharu-chan’s cute enough, right?”

Sousuke wishes he could see all of Kisumi’s face. To be able to watch him struggle out of this situation without making a fatal error would be fun. Instead he makes do with the tremble of Kisumi’s shoulders and the frowning fragment of his profile.

“Chi- I mean your friend is cute enough but I don’t think this is true love. We don’t know each other.”

“That’s the whole point of exchanging contact information,” the girl says more firmly. “You have to make it into true love yourselves.”

Kisumi shakes his head and takes half a step back. “I can’t accept any phone numbers.”

“How about you give her yours?”

Sousuke had seen Kisumi talk to many girls over the years. His quick wit and knack for coming up with something kind to say had served him well on many occasions. It has gained him many friends and softened other situations that even Sousuke had benefitted from. Having to ask for directions was less of a daunting task and Kisumi’s pseudo-flirting had probably got them both larger portion-sizes than usual at several restaurants in the past. The one thing Kisumi was chronically bad at was saying no to girls.

“That is just as likely to get me in trouble,” Kisumi says, his gaze casting about for some help.  His eyes widen as they fall on Sousuke and there is a second when he thinks about leaving Kisumi to it. It wouldn’t be a test as such, but Sousuke would be interested to see how Kisumi handles it.

But perhaps he doesn’t want to see Kisumi struggle to say no to a girl on this occasion.

Sousuke approaches the table with his notebook and a scowl in place. Contrary to his expectations the expressions on the girls’ faces don’t dim.

“Is there anything I can help with?” Sousuke tries his hardest to appear neutral but maybe he is a bit too happy to grin supportively at Kisumi’s blithering and spluttering. Kisumi shuffles his feet and gives Sousuke some room. He can take a step back and not get flustered by the girls further – at least that is what Sousuke intends.

“I’d say there is,” the brave girl says. She appears to be the spokesperson for the consensus of giggling and hushed whispers around the table. “If your friend isn’t going to give us his number you should at least give us yours.”

“I don’t believe our phone numbers are on the menu so you’ll have to order something else.”

The only girl with the nerve to speak pouts a little bit. She shrugs, “I’ll have chicken donburi.”

Kisumi takes the rest of the orders without fanfare. Sousuke stands beside Kisumi as he notes down what each girl wants. He smiles politely as he steps away and Sousuke almost rolls his eyes. Kisumi is never going to be able to say no to a girl.

There is some suspicious hissing when they are several paces away from the table and Sousuke prods Kisumi’s back to prevent the inevitable instance of Kisumi turning back to see if everything is alright. The finger poking at Kisumi’s back can’t be too much of an irritation but he grumbles and makes a small fuss when they are out of sight.

Sousuke does roll his eyes at this. “That didn’t hurt.”

Kisumi shrugs.

“I don’t know if you should have saved me,” Kisumi says almost shyly to the plates of food the chefs had placed on the counter ready to serve. He looks up from the dishes to smile at Sousuke. “One of those girls was apparently my true love.”

Kisumi is about to lift up two of the plates to take over to the only occupied table. Sousuke doesn’t fancy cutting short the first proper conversation he has had with Kisumi since the kiss with Mina. He has had plenty of shifts with Mina since then and there has been absolutely no awkwardness there but the few times Sousuke and Kisumi passed each other by on shifts, Sousuke had found he lacked any meaningful words. He had lacked even the most asinine words that comprised the bulk of their friendship. A sharp jibe or a sardonic comment that he could usually have made slipped away from Sousuke before it could fully form.

Sousuke has his chance now. Just to make a joke. Just to act with any semblance of normality.

“What kind of marriage would we have if I let anybody else claim to be your true love? Obviously I’m already your true love.”

Kisumi almost laughs. He lifts up the plates. Says, “You take the next servings. My true love needs to make my other suitors back off.”

Just like that, things are as normal as can be expected.

Aside from the more violent twisting in Sousuke’s gut each time Kisumi so much as winks in his direction. He had assumed he would prefer things to go back to the way before. Sousuke can see now that he was an idiot for even thinking such a thing.

He was tiring of the brassy tone in his own voice when he rallies back comments about the names of their future children – Kisumi still insisting on passing his name down to the next generation – or whether their wedding should take place in spring or summer, what sort of house their marital home will be, how many pets they will buy, or whether they should go to Guam for their honeymoon or just for an ordinary holiday.

Seconds after adding to the joke and Kisumi is no longer in earshot, Sousuke swallows back against the metallic bitterness in his mouth and attempts to arrange his facial features into something a bit less hopeless.

 

The weather is warm once again and the restaurant has a steady flow of customers, mostly teenagers who made the most of the air conditioning before between errands to be run or before they had decided what they were going to do for the rest of the day.

Sousuke doesn’t miss his school days much. When he was a kid he could never be bothered to expend the effort of forging friendships with people who weren’t Kisumi and Rin who had made the effort with him in the first place. It hadn’t been a big deal when Rin had gone to Australia and Kisumi had gone to a different middle school because Sousuke still had swimming. When he lost swimming he was mostly miserable and had no friends. He doesn’t miss his school days at all.

But it is difficult to say that to Kisumi.

“Honestly,” He says, loosing the knot of his apron and fanning himself with the neckline of his polo shirt. “It makes me angry, seeing all these kids sitting around and being lazy in the restaurant. They should be outside playing sports or having adventures or learning to play an instrument.”

“Maybe they’re having fun.”

“That’s not good enough,” Kisumi shoots back, his face is flushed and his eyes flash with something Sousuke would rather avoid. “I wasted plenty of time sitting around and doing nothing with my friends. Don’t you remember how it was to do nothing and hate yourself for wasting your day afterwards?”

Sousuke knows that feeling all too well but he has his doubts that having a social life would have amplified it to any degree. He stashes his apron in his locker and quickly strips off his polo shirt and roots around in his bag for the t-shirt he brought to change into after work.

“Sousuke.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes,” Sousuke says. Because he is listening. Very well. He finds his t-shirt and roughly pulls it over his head.

Kisumi is beside him, still wearing his uniform with the apron untied.

“You know, when our kids are wasting their youth instead of making memories for life I will be counting on you to back me up on this.”

Rather than admit that the memories he’d made as a teenager were ones he wouldn’t want to be saddled with for life, Sousuke hums. The taste is back – sharp and ferrous. He doesn’t get a chance to consider his words before they are out of his mouth, slicing his tongue and clacking against his teeth. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t be having kids.”

“What?” Kisumi looks confused despite how clean the cuts are.

“I don’t think we should joke like this anymore. It’s making things weird.”

Kisumi blinks a few times. “Oh. The jokes.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Things are a bit weird for me at the moment. Everything else is fine, just no jokes about being married or whatever.”

Kisumi is still, staring at a point behind Sousuke’s shoulder. His gaze is normal again and he nods quickly with a small smile. “Yeah. I get it. Sorry.”

Sousuke isn’t sure how it possible for Kisumi to ‘get’ anything when he doesn’t quite get it himself. But maybe he is being too obvious. Aside from remembering to ignore the _thing_ that he knows, Sousuke doesn’t acknowledge it much. But that might have been his mistake. There are scores upon scores of instances where he has been so keen on ignoring what he knows that he hasn’t been able to properly keep his own secret. 

“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s just me. I can’t take a joke.”

Kisumi backs off slowly, still nodding. He chucks his apron into his locker and quickly dons his jacket. “Yeah. Sorry. I need to get home quickly so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He is out of the door before Sousuke can tell him that he doesn’t need to be sorry.

It isn’t that Kisumi has done anything that needs apologising for. Sousuke doesn’t think he would be able to apologise for making things weird again.

 

‘ _are you free_ ’

‘ _Did you want to meet_ ’

Rin’s reply is quick and Sousuke feels heartened at that. He is bored but he knows that Kisumi has a shift at the restaurant this afternoon. He doesn’t particularly want to bump into Kisumi after he made things weird between them yesterday.

Sousuke has been thinking it over since it happened but he can only see that he somehow said something wrong. He only wanted to stop the creeping wriggle inside his skin each time Kisumi made a joke and Sousuke’s heart would soar into his throat. Kisumi isn’t even around and Sousuke feels very much like parting his lips is all it would take for his heart to tumble out of his mouth and onto his lap.

‘ _yes please a café or something_ ’

‘ _I’ll be at yours in an hour to pick you up_ ,’ Rin says.

 

“Why are you doing this?” Rin asks.

Sousuke wasn’t aware that Rin had been paying him any attention. While Sousuke had muttered his way through an explanation Rin had pored over a magazine article that he would apparently feature in and occasionally raising his head to greet one of the millions of passers-by who all desperately needed to make their presence known to Rin at the time.

Sousuke should have suggested they meet somewhere far away from their schools when he had the chance.

Rin’s hair is still damp and it drips when he shakes his head at Sousuke’s blank face.

“Sousuke.”

“Hmm?”

Rin scoffs. “Don’t bother then. You whinge all you want about… crap. How can you expect me to care? I have a life outside of you, you know.”

“What is happening?” Sousuke asks. His reluctance to fully open up had never garnered this response from Rin before.

“For weeks the only reason you have spoken to me is to complain how inept you are. Blah blah blah, you ruin everything. That’s hardly news to me,” Rin says.

“I’m sorry?”

Rin rolls up the magazine and stands. He kicks the chair in the direction of the table. “I’m going home seeing as I will have to be up at the crack of dawn.”

Sousuke quickly checks the time on his phone. It isn’t even four o’clock yet. When Sousuke says as much Rin rolls his eyes. “I’ve got stuff going on too,” He says as he rights his jacket across his shoulders. “I try to enjoy what little time I have and unfortunately for you that doesn’t involve listening to the chronicles of someone who is an architect of their own misery.”

Rin has stalked off before Sousuke can think of anything more eloquent than, “Oh.”

  

 

‘ _Do you want to meet before work???_ ’

Sousuke reads the message too quickly and then has to swallow back the bitter idiocy at the back of his tongue. There isn’t anybody else who sends Sousuke messages like this so the vague feeling of his heart dropping back into his chest is misplaced. This is nothing new so entertaining this as some brand new experience would be absurd.

‘ _yes_ ,’ he quickly replies, knowing full well that Gou gets impatient when she tries to make plans.

‘ _It would be helpful if you could let me know how soon you will be ready._ ’

Sousuke squints at his phone and rolls onto his side. He still does not quite want to move from the sleep-warmth of his covers. He is generous with his estimate of an hour so the content of Gou’s reply is beyond him.

‘ _Okay!! I am already here though!!_ ’

Sousuke doesn’t begin to drag himself from bed until there is a soft knock on his bedroom door. The vaguely human sound he makes is all his mum needs to poke her head around the door and frown at him.

“Sousuke, you’re not even up yet? Gou is here telling me that you have plans to meet up.”

His tired grunting was met with laughter but his mother leaving the room whilst cackling and calling to Gou is warning enough for Sousuke to get up. He washes quickly and throws on clothes he had been lounging in yesterday. His mum doesn’t say anything about that and Gou seems none the wiser so he is safe as it is.

“It’s cute that you’re hanging out before work,” Sousuke’s mum coos.

“Uh, thanks,” Sousuke says.

“I’m glad you think so,” Gou says, “I’ve already had someone tell me today that us hanging out is ‘creepy and weird.’”

“Who?”

“Guess?”

Sousuke cannot even begin to guess who would say such a thing, even with Gou’s exaggerated facial expressions as clues.

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Sousuke’s mum says as she passes Gou a plate of toast. “Ignore them. I think it’s sweet.”

 

 

“I met with Rin the other day,” Sousuke says carefully. Gou rolls her eyes, not unlike her elder brother, but at least she is smiling.

“I heard.”

“Did he say anything bad?”

Gou shrugs. Takes a swig of her drink and lets it fill up her cheeks before she swallows it in increments. “I don’t know; I’m not talking to him.”

Rin hasn’t been around for a while. Gou can’t have seen her brother for almost eighteen months and ten days into his visit she claims to not be on speaking terms with him. Considering the degree to which Gou admitted she cared for her brother not too long ago, Sousuke suspects the not speaking is a very recent thing.  

“Why aren’t you speaking to him?” Sousuke tries.

“He’s so annoying,” Gou huffs. Her foot is shaking rapidly and she folds her arms over her chest to emphasise the point. “He came home with a list of foods we can’t have in the house because he is ‘conditioning’ or whatever he calls it, and the next day I found a receipt for a bucket of chicken in his jacket.”

“What were you doing with his jacket?”

“Looking for money,” Gou shrugs. She closes her mouth around her straw.

“Did you find any?” Sousuke hazards. Gou shakes her head gravely. "Maybe you weren't meant to find any money."

"What's this? " Gou squawks. "Who is this philosophical old man and what have you done with Sousuke?"

Sousuke rolls his eyes but supposes he isn't too surprised by Gou latching onto anything to change the conversation. Despite hoping to work out whether he and Rin were still on good times he supposes he will have to wait for confirmation that Gou and Rin are on good terms too. It shouldn't take her too long to get over the friend chicken incident. In the mean time Sousuke supposes it can't hurt to encourage some positivity from Gou's end.

"I'm just saying maybe you'll get lucky with money if you are more forgiving of your brother."

"Why are you talking like this?" Gou mutters. "This is too weird. I don't want any middle-aged advice from you, thanks."

"I'm only a year older than you."

 "Well start acting like it then," Gou grumbles as though she was the one to start doling out advice. “You’re not a sad old man just yet.”

Sousuke isn’t so sure.

 

 

 

Sousuke thinks over Gou’s ‘advice’, if it could be called that. He always finds it difficult to parse the meaning of her thoughts on matters but knowing that she cares enough to get annoyed is some food for thought. Obviously he is bothered too but he had supposed that this was the way things were to go – he and Kisumi would drift apart because of a bit of awkwardness and that would be the end of that.

But Gou is right. Sousuke is not a sad old man yet. 

It isn’t hard to find himself alone in the changing room with Kisumi before work. The errant thought that Kisumi might not have been the one avoiding him bristles at the nape of his neck, pushing out of the base of his skull and dousing his spine with numbness. 

Kisumi smooths down the collar of his polo shirt, squinting at his reflection in the tiny mirror blu-tacked to the inside of his locker. His eyes widen a fraction when he notices Sousuke’s approach.

“Hi,” he says to the mirror.

“Hi,” Sousuke repeats, voice sounding a bit scratchier than he would like it to. He cleared his throat lightly and in the moment his gaze was averted Kisumi has turned to face him, leaning casually against the locker next to his own.

“How are you?”

“Fine,” Sousuke says flatly. “How are you?”

Kisumi is halfway through the typically polite reply of probably being fine when Sousuke realises he has already made a misstep. He is here to work things out, not to reaffirm the new distance. Sousuke interrupts roughly, “No. I mean, I’m not _that_ great. We haven’t been talking much lately.”

Kisumi looks surprised. It can’t be news to him that they have been speaking less. Sousuke can’t think about much else.

Kisumi drops his folded arms and his brow furrows before he finally speaks. “Sousuke.” The scratchiness is in his voice too but after a small pause he presses on and lets his voice crack on his words. “We’re friends but you kind of have to expect something like this happening when you basically tell someone that you’re homophobic. Well, no I suppose it’s not something that happens often enough for you to expect _this_ but saying something like that to someone like me is…”

“What?”

“I’m not finished. Don’t talk over me like that.” Kisumi stands up a bit straighter, the square of his shoulders slightly skewed and his fists trmebling at his sides. Sousuke doesn’t say anything. “I’m not the kind of person to be able to ignore knowing something like that. So things are different.”

Sousuke isn’t even sure what is happening. He had been so certain before in his embarrassment but now… He still isn't sure what he is supposed to be ‘expecting’. He doesn’t recall proclaiming to be homophobic but perhaps he did have a memory lapse due at some point in the past. Not that he would ever think to say such a thing considering his own circumstances.

Kisumi shuts his locker door and mutters something about being late for work. He is going to leave and then never speak to Sousuke again because he thinks something horrible about him.

“I’m gay.”

Kisumi sighs. He fiddles with his nametag for a moment. “There is such a thing as taking things too far.”

 

 

“Have you ever told somebody something about yourself that you don’t generally tell people?”

Gou stills the mop. After deciding she is satisfied with whatever she sees in Sousuke’s face she comes closer, the mop dragging a slow trail behind her. “Sousuke, are you okay?”

He isn’t, not really. He hasn’t done a closing shift in quite a while but he is glad that Gou is here to remind him what he is supposed to be doing once all the customers have left the restaurant.

He sags against the edge of the nearest bare table and wonders why he feels even heavier now.

“I thought it might make things a bit better, if I addressed it with Kisumi, but…” He can’t speak. His mouth tightens and his teeth grit against the aborted movements of his tongue. Gou bumps into his shoulder lightly and attempts a hug before she is thwarted by the mop handle that nearly takes her eye out.

She drops the mop with a clatter and very slowly and awkwardly winds her hands around Sousuke’s waist. She rests her head on Sousuke’s chest and lets rigor set into her muscles as she holds him.

Gou is small. Her breathing is slow and deep and Sousuke feels himself fall into the rhythm of the expansion and contraction of her chest against his. Her hands splay out softly and cradle his back. It isn’t too dissimilar to a time when he had pulled Gou close to his chest with a very delicate grip and waited for her tears to run dry. Sousuke wants to cry a little bit but dryness has fissured his throat and he doubts it would help much anyway. 

“He thinks I’m making it up,” Sousuke manages.

“Did you say it wrong?” Sousuke snorts loudly and at least there are cracks in the misery. Gou glares up at him. “If you got snot in my hair I will murder you.”

“Go ahead.” Then, more soberly, “I think I did say it a bit wrong.”

“I know I asked the question but how do you say something like _that_ wrong?”

Sousuke has no idea how it happens but it did happen. To him. But of course Gou, who has already told more people than Sousuke has about herself, is not in the same boat as him at all. It would be nice to know what the _right_ way to come out to people is but asking for help at this point would rely on Sousuke being a good student and Gou being a good teacher. He doubts that either of thise things are the case.

“He wouldn’t let me talk,” Sousuke shrugs. “So I just said ‘I’m gay,’ and then he got sort of angry and hasn’t spoken to me since.”

Gou breaks their eye contact and moves her ear back to Sousuke’s chest. Her hands curl back in on themselves somewhat.

“Maybe he misheard you,” was her wise and pensive answer.

“I don’t understand why you are even considering that as a possibility but thanks for your help anyway.”

“No problem. You did the same for me when I had just disappointed my mother.”

“Hey,” Sousuke says quietly, tilting his head to see the improbable cheer on Gou’s face. “You didn’t disappoint her. You didn't disappoint anybody and you know your family just want you to be comfortable. Actually I’m lying, you did disappoint me right now, in my hour of need.”

She pinches his back and perhaps Sousuke’s violent twist away from the point of pressure was a bit much but at least it made them both smile a little. “It is always your hour of need, you big baby. Let’s finish closing up and then we can stay awake all night talking about how horrible straight people are.”

“Do you think he’s straight then?”

Gou grins cryptically and shrugs. "You’ll find out what I think when the doors are locked and I don’t need to worry about clocking in for another three days.”

 

 

Kisumi thinks he has been set up. Sousuke can only be sure of that because Kisumi says as much several times while Gou attempts to convince him to stay. How Kisumi thinks he has been set up is a mystery to Sousuke though. Kisumi’s acceptance of Gou’s invitation was voluntary. He had agreed to come to Sousuke’s house to meet the two of them.

There isn’t much point in lamenting the fact he dutifully came, claiming to be expecting a meal, or an apology, or both. He is already here. Sousuke says, “You might as well stay.”

“Might I?” Kisumi says drily.

“That’s enough,” Gou says firmly. “I’m not saying that I’m sick of hearing about this situation-“

“That’s exactly what this is isn’t it,” Sousuke interrupts. “You and Rin are exactly the same.”

Gou raises her voice and flicks Sousuke’s arm. “But, it isn’t nice for you two to have this weird atmosphere.”

“I’m fine with the atmosphere,” Sousuke lies.

“Atmosphere?”

“I think it’s important that I mediate between two of my dear friends,” Gou says without a hint of irony. Kisumi probably cannot say that he is dear to Gou but Sousuke hopes that he can. She smiles sweetly at Sousuke and knocks their shoulders together before turning the same, slightly unsettling smile on Kisumi across the table.

“How?” Kisumi squints.  

“I sense that there is some sort of conflict,” Gou says, not at all cryptically.

“Do you now? Do you _sense_ it??”

As hopeful as Sousuke had been that Gou’s suggestion would work, he cannot say that he is entirely surprised at the direction things are taking. There had been no room for misinterpretation of how Kisumi had felt. The irritation is searing from Kisumi’s eyes and not even Gou is exempt from the glare. Sousuke keeps his mouth shut because this wasn’t his idea and trying to speak is already an ordeal.

“I don’t think that a person coming out to you should be taken lightly,” Gou says with the most minor furrow of her brows. “He hasn’t told many people. You’re friends so it would have been nice to have your support.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have treated it like a joke,” Gou says.

“What was I supposed to think?” Kisumi splutters, eyes darting between Gou and Sousuke frantically as though they would provide his answer now. He leans across the table and points an accusing finger at Sousuke. “What have you been saying to her?”

“I just told her what happened.”

“Are you sure?” Kisumi squints. He looks a little haughty as he says, “ _I’m gay. Probably. Haha_.”

“What’s that supposed to be?” Sousuke asks. He expects he knows exactly what that was supposed to be. It is better for Kisumi to confirm it himself though.

“That’s what you said to me,” Kisumi says.

Gou snorts loudly, knocking into Sousuke’s arm as though this is the funniest thing she has witnessed. The stricken horror on Sousuke’s face doesn’t feel particularly funny. The vindicated confusion on Kisumi’s face might be cause for some chuckles, not that Sousuke is in the mood for laughing.

He hadn’t even laughed when he came out to Kisumi, so why the incident is being twisted so roughly Sousuke has no clue.

“Are you serious?” Gou asks. Her splinter of solidarity shatters when Kisumi nods sombrely. “Sousuke told the story very differently.”

“I bet he did.”

“Of course I told it differently because that isn’t how it happened,” Sousuke retorts, struggling to keep his voice the right side of indignant. “I wasn’t laughing or anything. I took telling you very seriously.”

Kisumi shakes his head quickly. “You don’t mean it. It’s just because you regretted making things weird between us that you said something in a misguided attempt to make it right.”

“Are you serious right now?” Sousuke asks quietly. Gou sobers quickly and her pupils tremble as she looks up at Sousuke. She pats his thigh gently and he swallows against the roughness of his throat. “I have been gay the whole time. Long before you started your stupid jokes. It’s not just about you but I felt like I had to warn you that my feelings weren’t purely friendship.”

Kisumi frowns as he relaxes back into his seat with his arms folded. To Gou he says, “What would I need to be warned about?”

Despite her very poor impression of a good friend earlier she straightens her spine and keeps her tone neutral as she replies, “You wouldn’t be the first person who felt as though they had been tricked into something by being friends with people like… certain types of people.”

She clears her throat loudly and scratches at her cheek. She was much better put together than Sousuke could hope to be. There had only been once in the past that Sousuke had sat with Gou as her support. It seems like Gou fights Sousuke’s corner a lot more often.

Kisumi doesn’t speak for a long moment, watching Gou pretending she isn’t bothered by much. His voice is barely audible when he says, “I’m sorry.”

Gou shrugs.

“Okay,” Kisumi says, a little louder. “So I was wrong and you’re not homophobic or whatever. What was your problem, Sousuke?”

Gou must have heard the exact same thing that Sousuke did. She doesn’t stifle her snort and she wipes at her nose quickly. 

“You’re definitely messing with me, aren’t you,” Sousuke says. Kisumi blinks innocently.

“What are you talking about?”

“Obviously I was feeling uncomfortable with the joke because I was starting to like you… romantically.”

Kisumi flushes so quickly he must be dizzy. He shifts in his seat and stares very hard at the table between them.

“That’s what- I was -- It was sort of what I had been hoping for the whole time.”

Gou gasps, smacks Sousuke’s arm as though there is something else he needed to pay attention to. Maybe if she hadn’t hit him he would have heard the flipside of Kisumi’s words. There must be something that he missed. His ears are too optimistic if he really thinks that all Kisumi said was that he wanted Sousuke to like him.

Sousuke has liked Kisumi for a long time. It is very possible that he is twisting this all to his mind’s advantage. He stays very still and very quiet.

“I think I’ll go home,” Gou says brightly. She stands quickly and rejects both Sousuke and Kisumi’s offers to escort her home. “I have few errands to run on my way home. I think you two are better off talking things out between yourselves.”

It sounds like one of the poorer ideas spawned from Gou’s head. Sousuke tells her as much at the front door. She hugs him briefly. “Make me proud.”

“What does that even mean? What about mediating?”

Gou leaves cheerily without explaining anything at all. Sousuke has no idea how to make Gou proud but it probably doesn’t involve sitting opposite Kisumi in silence and trying not to stare too hard. He glances down at the table and when he looks back up Kisumi is staring at the ceiling and biting at his lip.

Sousuke clears his throat lightly.

“So, as previously established, I like you.”

Kisumi nods and finally makes eye contact with Sousuke for all of a second. He averts his gaze yet again.

“I was wondering whether you might like me too,” Sousuke says. There is no point being hesitant at this point. That probably wouldn’t make Gou very proud at all. Kisumi appears almost surprised at the query and he smiles bashfully as his shoulders round and he rubs at the back of his neck.

“Yes, I do.”

Sousuke swallows… something. It could have been bile or an effervescence of relief. He doesn’t want to risk vomiting on the table between them so he swallows again just to make sure there are no obstructions in his throat.

“That’s… good.”

“Yeah,” Kisumi agrees.

“This is weird.”

“Yeah.”

Sousuke can’t help but laugh. He is mostly glad that he isn’t throwing up in front of Kisumi. Kisumi splutters through his own laugh. It’s weird and Sousuke feels so shy when he never has before. There is only one thing he can think of to make things a bit less awkward. He says, “Are you hungry?”

 

“Do you not find it weird that your family owns a restaurant but you can’t cook to save your life?” Kisumi is wearing a smirk that is a lot more familiar than this awkwardness. It suits him better than Sousuke recalls and the expression end up making him feel shy all over again.

“What do you call this then?” Sousuke asks as he gestures to the pot boiling on the cooker. He had struggled momentarily to work out which size pot to use and how to measure out the water to boil and which hob corresponded to which dial on the cooker but he worked it out eventually.

“This isn’t something that requires any degree of skill, you know. It’s ramen. You boil it for four minutes and I’m not even asking you to add meat or vegetables to it or anything,” Kisumi says.

Sousuke thinks that this might be a good time for a kiss but this is still new. Too new for any thoughts of intimacy to seem plausible. Just trying to work out whether or not Kisumi liked him had been an insurmountable challenge. He pretends to concentrate on stirring the noodles in the pot because even he knows that they can get stuck to the bottom.  

“Whatever,” He says. Talking means that his mouth is too occupied for other stuff he keeps thinking about stupidly. “I only have to be in charge, I don’t have to do any of the cooking.”

“Being in charge isn’t going to fill our children’s bellies.”

There is a tremor in the air and Sousuke’s hand stills. He taps the spoon on the side of the pot and puts it down with a clink. His eyes sting a little bit and he wonders whether the noodles really are burning and the smoke is getting to him.

He chances a look at Kisumi for just a second and, goodness, he looks terrified.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-“

“No,” Sousuke says as calmly as he can. “It’s a joke, right. We can still do that.”

“Of course. It’s a joke.” Kisumi hisses and Sousuke reaches to check for any signs of a burn. Sousuke had been fiddling with a lot of the dials on the cooker so maybe the induction hob hadn’t lit up with the switch of heat. Kisumi snatches his arm away roughly and grabs at Sousuke’s wrists, turning him so they are properly facing one another. “I don’t mean that. It is a joke, sort of. But I just want to say that if we do _this_ and we become a thing, one day I will say that and I will mean it. One day I am going to mention something about getting married, or having kids, or spending the rest of my life with you and I am going to mean it.”

Kisumi’s grip slips and he drops his hands to his sides. He doesn’t look at Sousuke again. “But that was a joke, yeah. Sorry.”

“How can you do stuff like that?” Sousuke asks. Kisumi doesn’t answer in the time it takes for Sousuke to tip the ramen out into two bowls. He follows Sousuke over to the sink as Sousuke attempts to scrape burnt noodles from the bottom of the pot. Sousuke gives up when he finds the noodles adhered more strongly than he thought. He squirts washing-up liquid into the pot and fills it with hot water to let it soak. “You’re brave.”

“Brave?”

“I felt weird for months because I thought you were flirting with me. When I finally did say something I messed it up big time.”

“Well I _was_ flirting with you,” Kisumi says. “And I didn’t say anything at all, did I?”

“True,” Sousuke allows. He deftly picks up their bowls and asks Kisumi to fetch chopsticks and spoons for each of them before going back to the dinner table. “This is so weird.”

Kisumi sits in the seat opposite Sousuke again. He leaves his chopsticks on the table next to his bowl and groans, “Yeah, this is so weird.”

“I’m not even hungry,” Sousuke admits. He was sure he had been moments away from throwing up before suggesting they eat. It was something to do but after cooking Sousuke can’t bring himself to actually eat. His stomach feels to fuzzy and uncertain. Anything could happen if he attempts to eat. The vomiting he had been trying to avoid could very well happen. The more melodramatic part of him envisions his own entrails tumbling from his mouth and joining the ramen in his bowl but he tries not to dwell on that too much.

“Me neither,” Kisumi agrees. “I’m sorry. I just feel a bit too… I’m not thinking straight and I’m just saying stuff.”

“Me too. Probably,” Sousuke says. But if he doesn’t take the chance now there are a good many things he might never say. That is just as scary as this heavy uncertainty. “But maybe we should work on the assumption that we _will_ spend our lives together.”

“What? Work on the…? What?”

Apparently this is not an occasion where Sousuke can escape any potential embarrassment.

“It seems like a bit of a waste of time if we dance around things until we think the other one is one the same page. There seems to be a fair bit of evidence that we are rubbish at that sort of thing,” Sousuke says, hoping he sounds half reasonable. “Let’s just try to go back to how we were before, _but_ , we can act that way and relax because we totally are going to be that disgustingly in-love couple that everyone hates.”

“Disgustingly in love,” Kisumi repeats. He sounds dazed and, well Sousuke isn’t far off the same feeling. “Okay.”

“What?”

“I said okay,” Kisumi says, eyes wild with daring.

“What?”

“From now on we’re married,” Kisumi says, the steadiness of his voice belying the nature of his words. “So everything else will be easy, right?”

“You sound like a crazy person right now,” Sousuke mutters.

“Do you sound any better?”

“No,” Sousuke allows. “So we’re ‘married’ now.”

It sounds even sillier in his own voice but he can’t help the fact that it makes him smile a little bit. He doubts Kisumi is wicked enough to play this as a joke but even so just the thought of the possibility of a future makes him giddy. He ducks his head despite knowing Kisumi has seen him grinning like an idiot. Not matter how hard he tries he can’t muster the scepticism he normally wears so well.

“Let’s eat,” Kisumi says, maybe to save Sousuke’s embarrassment or maybe because he suddenly feels hungry. The ramen is luke-warm and it doesn’t taste of much but after eating Kisumi says it is delicious and says, “I’ll be happy if you cook like this for me every day.”

Sousuke’s ears burn and his face splits in his embarrassment. He doesn’t mind it though.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This came to be because I decided to challenge myself to write in the present tense. Let me tell you it was much harder than I thought it would be. I'm still not even sure about the phrasing of some of this because the present is so far out of my comfort zone. It was kind of fun though. Maybe next time I will challenge myself to write something where I don't yoke Gou and Sousuke into yet another passive-aggressive friendship!
> 
> Thanks for reading. Let me know if there's anything up with this. or if you like it or whatever.


End file.
